


singing ain't this life so sweet

by freeal



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Dante-centric, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Original Character, Possible Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-02-16 12:32:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18691567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freeal/pseuds/freeal
Summary: Je vois la vie en rose.





	1. life has just begun

**Author's Note:**

> Title from David Gray's This Year's Love.
> 
> Awfully self-indulgent. Lots and lots of OC nonsense, it's probably really annoying. It would be easy to creat a perfect mirror of Dante but I found it too gimmicky.
> 
> Lore is way off. English is not my language.

It has never been the same, isn't it, the Residential Area, after that giant tower shot out of the ground like an open fracture, the slaty bone jutting out horribly and people screamed, falling down en masse in shock and agony. 

Quite the disaster, it was.

I was young back then and didn't really remember much. Just a big commotion, the ground shook and everything was falling over and breaking. Scantly clad dancers and decently dressed customers twisted around and hissed at each other like rubber snakes, scrambling to crawl on top of sparkling debris of the disco ball, leaving slimy trails behind them, the blood shining like half-mixed greasepaints under the evocative stage light. The air was poignant with the smell of alcohol from the broken bottles. People crying and shouting and running and hiding. Praying.

They prayed like they were special. So special that their mute god would break the silence for this once, to save them from the apocalypse and raise them into heaven.

But it was not the apocalypse after all, and naturally no god rushing to rescue. Lina and I got separated in the crowd. It was not until four days later that I saw her again. She had sought refuge in the nearby church but got trampled over at the door, an unfortunate event of human anatomy, panic and self-preservation. Nobody's fault, really, or so they would tell me four days later beside a colourless bed.

So. Lina was taken in by the sanctuary of the Lord, and I ran straight into the Devil's den.

The shop was dark and empty, smelled of mould, blood, gunpowder and pizza grease. The whole place was a mess, front door collapsed and furniture either smashed or chopped to pieces. I had to enter through an unsecured window at the side, emerging from decades worth of cobwebs and feeling like a freshly wrapped mummy.

But I hadn't expected the place to be occupied. It still looked abandoned in this current state, however. An undecided limbo between heaven and hell. My foot kicked into something light but hard and suddenly there's movement in the dark—a plastic ball, running noisily across the pockmarked floor and something ominously viscid. It eventually stopped, in a pocket of sunlight the wreckage of the front door failed to capture. The image's still clear to me to this very day—it was an eight ball, black as death, a shock of crimson slashing across the number like a fresh wound.

Zero and zero.

I relaxed into dizzying vertigo, feeling my muscle aching from the tension.

Then all of a sudden exhaustion was holding me in its cushiony yet dominating grip. A moment later, I found myself hiding inside a nearby closet and dozing off to the smell of cold dust and distant screaming.

When I woke up my surroundings was pitch black. Night had fallen and I was freezing to the bones. There's a strange rumbling nearby, the engine of a motorcycle, perhaps, growling lowly like a preying leopard. Through the gapes on the closet door and the window I could see two figures standing in front of the shop, but nothing more.

"Doesn't it sound strange though?" There's a young man's voice saying.

And a woman replying, "I think it sounds badass."

"In an 'Imma kick demon ass so hard they gonna cry for real' sorta way, or in an 'I'm a handsome devil who's emotionally evolved I don't mind admitting I cry sometimes' sorta way?"

"Don't know and don't care. Just pick one." The woman said, sounding a bit annoyed, "Or you can come up with something on your own."

"Nah. I'm not good at this." The man said, "Doesn't run in the family, you know. My parents obviously couldn't come up with anything on their own as well."

"Hm." The woman smiles. "Dante's not a bad name. And more importantly a name to keep."

"I guess. There's not much else." The man named Dante said. "Anyways. You up for another round of demon killing? Still feeling kinda pumped, I bet we can find more if we try. Oh yeah by the way, we need a name for the demon-killing equivalent of a pub crawl. I have a feeling that I'll do it a lot after this." He waited for a moment, "I'm open to suggestions?"

"Party's over, Dante." The woman said, firing up the engine, "Call me when you have a legitimate business. I would suggest starting with fixing the door."

And with a loud screech of the tires, she was gone.

Dante sighed and turned to the rubble that was his front entrance. "Buzzkill." He grumbled, kicking one piece of stone and it shot into the wall like a bullet. He yawned, stretching his back, looking bored instead of tired. "Not today. Dante. Not today."

In a blurry movement he struck out. The rubble detonated into a burst of greyish cloud, pulverizing instantly. Dante sneezed violently, before jumping inside. 

He was wearing a red coat covered in pale dust but his head was even paler, the white hair semi-translucent and glowing like silver. He looked like a phantom under the frosty moonlight. A devil, even, trapped forever in the insoluble machinery of hell, looking for a victim, another angel rebel, or a phosphorus fix, a flawed solution and an imperative necessity, as the absence of heat and light engulfing him meticulously with the tick of the clock.

Yet the devil merely huffed, throwing himself into the chair behind the heavy desk and he stayed there, for a long long moment. Long enough for me to question my sanity. Had I really seen a man entering or was it the trick of the shadow? I began to vibrate inside of my skin, panic rising and the darkness around me suffocating. 

But at last the man on the chair moved. He was taking off one of his gloves and holding it before him, then there was another long pause of silence.

What's he thinking?

"She's not wrong. Could be a cool name." Suddenly he said, ironically in a thinking-out-loud manner, putting down the glove in front of him like it's something precious but also something he wouldn't want to touch again. "But it's not the devil that cries, isn't it." His voice had dropped to a whisper. 

Inside the closet I was starting to sweat and outside in the shadow cast by the toxic quicksilver of the moonlight, the devil was slowly bending into himself, as if suddenly discovering a black hole inside him, and he's collapsing inward helplessly.

Right at this moment, I burst out of the closet door. The devil was turning his human eyes to me but I was already running.


	2. life is sweet

So yes. The devil's shop was there before Lina had died. The nickname came much later, actually, after the tacky neon sign had been mounted at the front of the shop and about three dozens of concerned citizens reported suspicious movement inside that dinky little place. And yes again, people called the cops on him even in this forsaken part of the town.

Every time it was quite a hassle for us in Love Planet as well. Josh, with his unparalleled grace, infinite supply of silk shirt, and paranoia fit for an ancient king, would rush out in a cannabis-infused flurry, fisting that day's lucky girl's hair in his hand, tearing across the club in her pained scream and his own colourful cursing, swearing on the unholy matrimony between him and someone else's mother that he would find out who tipped the cops off and feed their face to the dogs. The sight was not healthy for my young and tender heart.

The business was already shrivelling back then, right after the tower wreck havoc upon the whole district. Nobody seemed to care enough to get rid of the tower and save the neighbourhood. People with means moved out at first notice and those without degenerated into husks of themselves, not looking further into the next day. The whole town was dying and the Residential Area was the first limb to rot.

School felt like a half-shed tree early into winter. I didn't bother to show up after a while. Josh never gave a shit and mother was nowhere to be seen most of the time after Lina had died. I knew she's been avoiding me. To her I was a ghastly sight of only one half of a head being chopped off. The gory wound that cuts an eight into a zero was not for those faint of heart, even the mere thought of it had driven my mother into a half-crazed delirium.

I would rather be reasonable, and find a way to stretch my zero into a circle that at least fits around myself.

I even asked Dante one day, that if he could train me for his job, and he shot me an incredulous glance while flirting with an impossibly long string of cheese.

"Do you even know what I actually do?"

"No." I shrugged, looking around, "But you seem to, well, get by."

"That's debatable. But thank you." Dante swallowed the food in his mouth, thought for a second, then retrieved a few darts from the dartboard, gesturing with his head, "Try to throw this at that thing. Think about murdering it dead." He told me, handing me the darts, then grabbed another slice, leaning against the desk to watch.

The handles of the darts felt slippery in my hand from the grease. The devilish thing's dead eyes were looking at me from the wall with a murky stare. It was horrendously ugly.

So I did what Dante told me to. The dart nailed into one of its eyes like cutting through a lump of lard.

Dante nodded without comment, then told me to throw it again, but this time thinking about saving a loved one from it.

I did it again.

"Nope." Dante licked his greasy fingers with a loud pop and said, "No deal."

"What?" I had no idea what he's going on about, "You gonna tell me what I did wrong?"

And of course he wouldn't tell me. "It's just. Your eyes are not right," He said while sitting back into the chair, obviously brushing me off.

It was honestly just a swing in the dark but I kicked Dante's chair extra hard and told him "Your eyes look like something died inside of it," and he merely let out a diabolic laugh.

I had other means to make money anyway. Back then Dante's booker had rented a room upstairs. The man was unimpressive but not unkind. He paid good tips to me delivering this and that whenever he's too drunk or plain lazy. Dante himself rarely came here, opted to hole up in his own place, loitering away his days sitting in that chair. I had never understood it. He sat there like he's waiting for someone and he stared like there wasn't just nothing.

Dante seemed to sustain solely on pizza and had a sweet tooth for strawberry sundaes. I had a suspicion that he alone could support the local diner with the amount he ordered. Or least, whenever he's got the money.

Interestingly Dante was always on the verge of being broke, and his front door either in repair or completely smashed up. After a while he seemed to just give up. His reputation had been built over the years anyway. The Devil of Slum Avenue. I was convinced he would become the inspiration for the next urban fantasy hero getting the girl and saving the day, his deeds and quirks printed on recycled papers with a cover that doesn't match with the depiction in the book.

I was full of bizarre fantasy and grim fascination those days. Life felt more like a game instead of labour, and the world the giant dancefloor of a psychotic party, everybody flailing their limbs until they fall off and I was bouncing around like a headless hummingbird, looking for the date I came with but immediately lost track of minutes into the party.

I should've known back then. All good parties end unsightly with a bad hangover.

It turned out that my mother had died a while back and nobody bothered to tell me. Josh just frowned at me with two blown-out pupils and said, "It's her own fault. She knew what she's doing." He sniffed, rubbing at his ruddy nose, "Yo kid, pass me the lighter."

"Where's her stuff," I asked.

Josh grabbed the lighter himself and fumbled with it for a minute. "What's the fuck with this cheap shit." He grumbled and turned to yell at the bathroom. "Why do you have to be such a cheap slut?"

"Give me her stuff," I said.

Josh paused, then threw the lighter squarely in my face. I was dragged the old-fashioned way with my hair straight to my room and got locked in there, but I didn't scream once. I ground my teeth on the skin nearest to me until I tasted blood, whether it was Josh's or mine.

The day I was released from my in-house imprisonment, Josh just disappeared, with his impressive stash of drugs, the best half of his silk shirts, and of course all the cash. Nobody was surprised actually, they looted the place within three hours in a chaotic yet proficient manner. Someone was crying throughout the entire process and I too busy dodging another merciless stab of sharpened nails or stone-cold kick with heels.

I'm officially an orphan now, I told myself. The party's over and I needed a job.

It's harder than it sounds and it sounded fucking hard to me.

I squatted in Love Planet for a while, living off on the secret stash I saved throughout the years. Dante let me crash on his couch occasionally when I needed to hide from the property inspector or such and I paid him back with pizzas and sundaes whenever I could.

"Isn't there like a social system for kids like you?" He said one day while digging into the strawberry sundae I brought him.

"Right. Like you would go there yourself." I snorted, "Or did you?"

"Touché." He grinned, squinting his eyes contently, wiping his face clean with the back of his hand like a cat. "Try not to die out there."

"If only I would be so unfortunate." I waved.

Ironically, in the end, it's the plight of the Residential Area saved me from starvation. Businesses were closing everywhere and people bailing town without notice. I was sitting in the local diner one early morning ignoring the hunger chewing at my stomach and the waitress was strutting behind the counter, muttering under her breath into the phone that the day shift had ghosted but she's not doing another one or for the love of god she'll die on the spot. So I walked to the counter, waited for her to end the call, then asked how to operate the coffee machine behind her.

The owner had no qualms hiring a minor and kept the payment off the book. It would save her money and I didn't care anyway. Dante was not happy to hear the news, claiming I being a brat would never learn to make a decent sundae and I told him it's time to fucking grow up and not obsess over ice cream like an 8-year-old.

Life was boring and the pay barely covering the bills but I got by. The diner was farther away to the tower than Love Planet. I stared at it a lot between works and found it less intimidating from this distance. To me it looked like the remaining skeleton of some sort of a prehistoric monster. It stood in utter silence and indifference to this age, as its time had already passed and it past buried. For what it was summoned back into this unlife, it didn't know, nor care.

One day I saw Dante staring at it too. There's a mess of jam and ice cream around his mouth as usual but his eyes looked ancient, grave and insincere like a funeral. The eyes of the devil I knew. He's been growing out his hair lately, the bang now obscuring his eyes almost completely and I wondered if it's intentional. Abruptly I was reminded of our first encounter with a stutter in my heart, the ghost of the blind panic screaming at the back of my head and I was overfilling someone's coffee. 

I didn't know if Dante knew it was me but he didn't bring it up and I would never offer voluntarily.

The golden days, as I expected, didn't last long. The owner had decided to close the diner after all and refused to pay me the past two weeks' salary. "Honey," The owner sighed like she's feeling stressed, "You're never employed officially so quit the whining. We both know I saved your ass back then so now's the time to show me some respect."

"Help yourself to something to eat on your way out and don't tell people I was mean to you." She said sweetly before hanging up.

Dante, of course, was more concerned about the lack of sundaes in his life.

"Ugh." He grumbled as he thumbing through a stack of files, "This job is giving me a headache and I can't even put a sundae over it." Suddenly he lifted his head to stare at me, looking slightly desperate, "I'm gonna break in that goddam diner if it means getting my sundae." 

"Do it," I told him at once. "The back window above the trash bin is broken or you can just smash the door in. Jam's in the fridge." 

I went back to the motel I was living in after giving Dante detailed instructions on operating the ice cream machine. The receptionist stopped me and asked me for the key or next week's rent. I didn't have any so I was kicked out with my one backpack of luggage and I started to wander.

I hadn't done this in a long time, it felt like nothing at first. I even thought idly to myself, would Dante really break into the diner just to get the last taste of his favourite dessert? I was almost certain he'll do it and the thought made me unreasonably happy.

A while later, however, my feet started to hurt and I realised that I was still wearing the diner's uniform. I had nowhere to change it in and my skin was itching. Eventually, I was stopped by a honk and a pair of eyes brushing past me from head to toe. We talked about the price then I got into the car. I asked him if I could change my clothes on the back seat and he stared at me through the rearview mirror the entire time he's looking for a quiet spot.

Funny enough, when he parked we were not far from the diner. It's a good thing really, that I wouldn't need to walk far when I went back to the motel tonight. I got out of the car, looked across the street and what I saw almost made me chuckle.

"What's wrong?" The man asked.

"Nothing." I shook my head and got into the front seat.

I saw Dante as usual in his crimson coat sitting in the deserted diner alone and unaware, his silhouette said _nowhere to go, nowhere to go_ and he's eating a strawberry sundae in a half-demolished diner. I closed my eyes and bent down and I thought about Dante's sundae. The ice cream cold and smooth and the strawberry jam tart yet sweet, shining like a ruby or a gem-like candy one of the dancers used to stuff into Lina's palm or mine whenever she's got a break, and I used to love her like a mother because the candies were so sweet I wanted to cry.

The man's cum was bitter but I tasted sweet thinking about strawberry sundae.


	3. life full of music

I got out of the Residential Area as soon as I could, but it was still a good place to go whenever the client's feeling cautious. Its apparent decline stopped after a few years, suspending in a limbo between life and death. It still amazes me, how the street would instantly go empty and even the air smells rancid as soon as you drive down one block into the district. 

I was waiting for the cab on the deserted street when I saw a dapper man walking out of Dante's place, circling cautiously around the dangerously dangling door.

"Bring me a real gig next time!" Dante's voice ringed out behind him.

The man just snorted, put on his hat and walked away.

I crossed the narrow street and walked in. Dante was, naturally, still lounging in his chair, legs crossed on the desk. A few pieces of documents were spread haphazardly before him but he's reading a magazine with a gaudy cover. His eyes shot up, fixed on me behind his hair like two wisps of blue smoke rising from the river on soberly chilling winter mornings. He's probably scared off a lot of uninvited guests with a cold gaze like this. Then the eyes softened, if just a little.

I've changed a lot but I knew he recognised me. Suddenly I was reminded of the pale ghost in the moonlight hiding a bloodless wound, of being just eight years old, shaking alone in a closet smelled like an ending childhood.

"Who's that?" I asked, in the most casual voice I could manage.

Dante arched an eyebrow, putting the magazine down. "A friend."

I spread my hands at him, making an exasperated face.

He laughed a little. "My current booker." He said, "Met him way back though. Different city, different time."

"Where's Enzo?" I asked, "He didn't hurt himself finding another shifty strip club to live in, did he?"

"Quit the business. Said he's made more money peddling vintage vinyl than us 'freelancers'." Dante pouted a little, lacing his fingers on his chest.

"Huh. Shame." I shrugged.

"Yeah." He shrugged as well. "But on the bright side, look at all the sweet stereos he sold me with a huge slice off." He pointed at the nearby shelf, on which massive and expensive looking sound systems were standing with a sort of majestic dignity I hadn't managed once in my entire life.

I was fascinated. "Can I try them?"

"Nope." Replied Dante cheerfully, "All broken. Hence the discount."

I huffed. "You're crazy."

"Maybe." He said, sinking further into the chair, covering his eyes with the magazine, "Just use the jukebox if you need a little bit of a tune in your life right now."

"Thanks, I'm good." The cab was honking loudly outside on the street. I knocked on the heavy desk twice, "'S good to see you, Dante."

The lower half of his face smiled. "Always a pleasure."

 

 

 

It was a given that I would run back to the Residential Area when I had nowhere else to go. The irony was not lost on me. The flush of adrenaline was still hot on my skin and I almost shivered when I found myself walking into Dante's shop looking for a place to stay just like the first time my life went to complete shit. But I just smiled.

Dante was fumbling with an aggressive looking guitar, humming in broken notes unintelligibly. He raised an eyebrow at the dirt and grime all over me but didn't offer any snarky comment. Instead he said, "I'm thinking about changing profession. Learn a new trade. Find a gig at a bar or something. This job can suck its own underpaid cheap ass."

"You job pays fine," I said, "You're just whiny and like to waste money on something ridiculous." I reached into my backpack and took out a stack of money, "And I've got good news for you. This," I shook the money, "is a month's rent."

He frowned. "That's a lot for one month on a creaky couch. What did you do?"

"What does it look like?" I shrugged, "I was hiding from someone. Yours' probably the safest spot in the entire city."

"Then where did you get the money?" Dante eyed the money suspiciously, "You didn't rob the bank planning to plant it on me, did you?"

"It's one of my secret stashes. I ain't planning on dying of stupidity yet." I shook the money in my hand again like holding a tail of a dead fish. "So? You gonna take the money and let me stay or what?"

Slowly, Dante was sitting up, putting down the guitar, looked me seriously in the eyes, and said, "First thing first, we're ordering pizza."

 

 

 

It was summer. One day it was humid and another as dry as a desert. The sound of the city was drowned and put out by the ferocity of the heat. Long wordless days of the sun hanging overhead like the sword of Damocles. In summer even madness is mute. Fearless lunatics, charred skins on the white-hot iron of metal trash cans, dancing in shoes full of blood and burst blisters, running away from pistol-wielding archangels. Worshippers of pagan gods, lying half-conscious after Bacchus' banquet in sewers and junkyards, listening to the silent buzz of dead city radio, dying in the afternoon with a dull fleshy thump. With each death the Residential Area got quieter, until it was nothing more than a graveyard of sound.

But it was even quieter in Devil May Cry.

Dante slept a lot and with no discernible pattern. He had a small room upstairs but clearly preferred his precious chair. He would be reading the magazine one minute talking with me and asleep in the next. His posture wouldn't change whatsoever and I wonder was it because he's tense even in his sleep, or because he just decided to confront the world with this astonishing idlesse with every fibre of his being it didn't matter whether he's dormant or alert.

He also read a lot. Adult magazines about swimsuit models and weapons of mass destruction. Books with strange little paintings as words and occult drawings with prospects evocative of hell. He read each and every word in his job details and contracts, but would then strewn them arbitrarily across the whole shop without caring about upsetting the sequence. Also heavy tomes of literature, sighs and tears and musings, confessions and repudiations of love, deconstructing and condensing and perpetuating all of existence, gushing from the inexhaustible fountain of youth that was the brilliance of the greatest mind, or the mortal joy and woe in the simplest form, since the beginning of time.

The days were mostly quiet and mostly inconsequential. I read Dante's books and dozed off to daylight, feeling the silence closing in around me inch by inch but did nothing to retaliate. When the quiet became unbearable Dante would play his music. Sometimes from the jukebox, sometimes with his guitar. The songs were either screaming meaningless words or melodies horribly garbled like a nightingale crushed on the windshield. I didn't really mind.

It was an especially stuffy afternoon when the blonde woman walked inside. Dante and I were slowly dying of the heat and general starvation in our respective spots. He had blown away the money I gave him immediately. I had no idea what he spent the money on, just it's none of my business but we could've lived like actual human beings if he didn't.

Along with the blonde woman there were two gunshots. Two shiny bullets, swishing straight to Dante's head. 

He was snoring a little, sleeping off the hangover from an entire bottle of whisky. But before the first click of the woman's heel hitting the floor Dante's eyes opened and he's holding a long sword. It sliced through the air with the prettiest whistle I've ever heard. Then the bullets were scattering across the ground with four different clatters.

"Still not using Rebellion, I see." The woman said, resting one gun on her shoulder and another beside her hip.

"Mundus just had to wag his tongue and gossip didn't he?" Dante rolled his eyes, slumping back into the chair. "Why do you care anyway?"

"I'm caring like a good friend." The woman approached the desk, "And gathering information as I go like a professional." She wrinkled her nose at the mess, seated herself delicately on Dante's table, then turned to me with a lupine smile.

"Aren't you going to introduce us, Dante?" She said, "It's unlike you to be rude."

"It's imperative that my existence here is thoroughly ignored." I declared weakly, trying to stay awake to this article about a recent petition I'm reading, "Life and death situation. Thank you very much."

"You heard it." Dante spread his hands. "Not my fault."

The woman smirked, but dropped the topic without comment. She turned to Dante again, "If you're not using Rebellion, I'd gladly take it out for a twirl. Demon swords tend to get grumpy if you starve them."

Dante made a show of considering, then said, "Wonderful idea. One problem though, I'm the jealous type."

The woman snorted at that, running her finger across the desk and picking up a smear of dust. "You don't accept the truth, and you don't get over it." She frowned, "You've got to make a decision one day, Dante."

"But not today. Not today." Dante wagged his finger and winked. "Come. Let's not talk unpleasantries in this heartwarming reunion. It's been almost a year since you went on this demon gap year or something. Tell me, what have you found on humans' prized earth, other than grass is green and sky is blue?"

The woman was silent at first, and then, "Death and corruption," She said, with a strange and understated melancholy, "Laughter and music."

Dante just nodded, "Sounds like a place I know." He cocked his head, "So? What's the verdict? What're you going to do with this life you didn't ask for?"

"What else? Serve myself like a queen, of course. After all, I too had a hand in the assassination of the king." The blonde woman said, extending her limbs gracefully and electricity danced on her skin. "The king is dead. Long live the queen."

"Hear hear." Dante grinned. "Speaking of which, would her illustriousness be so interested in a partnership, between her one-woman kingdom and this humble establishment?"

"Why, it's an enticing proposal indeed." The freshly crowned queen smiled, gauging the surroundings, "I'll...consider it."

"And that alone calls for a celebration." Dante clapped, "I will leave it to your highness's fair judgement of course." He flopped forward on the desk, grabbed the phone, dialled a number with lightning speed, and handed it to the blonde woman, "But no olive please."

Still maintaining the smile, the woman stood up graciously, then left without another word.

"Dammit." I heard Dante cursed.

Sometimes later, after I had napped twice and read the same article over and over again without remembering anything, I asked Dante, "What do you guys actually do anyway?"

Dante was doing a broken riff on his guitar. It shrieked. "I'm a freelancer," said Dante, looking positively satisfied with himself, "Getting paid, being free."

"Right." I drawled, "And I'm a therapist. "

Dante smirked, "Are you not? Here I am thinking we're finally going somewhere this session," then readily gave it up, "Sometimes I kill things to kill them dead, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I kill things so that others can live." He shrugged, "Sometimes I don't."

"That simple?" I hummed, "Sounds boring."

"It's a job, not a game." Dante scoffed, "My party days are long gone anyway."

"How's that?"

"Well, what's else? The same old story. Time's past and things changed." He swept at the strings carelessly, making a loud bang like the last note of a tragical finale, "My date left. The dance's over, and I forgot the song."

I nodded, returned to my article, and read it again. The quietness of summer had crept into the room once more, wrapping around my ankles and dragging me down into the deep water of deadly repose. In the background, Dante was standing up from his chair and making clinking sound of glass rumbling through his mostly empty bottles. I blinked slowly, eyelids heavy like rusty anchors. The worn leather of the sofa was sinking into me, engulfing me, letting me fall into a dark void. I fell for an eternity but I didn't hit the ground.

Suddenly, Dante spoke again, and I jolted awake like waking up from a bad dream. 

He was standing next to the bar holding a wine bottle, observing his own shop from the far corner like an inspector not impressed. "Ya know, I was kinda proud of this place back then. Seemed like a new beginning. Another city. Another life."

"New beginnings are overrated." I said, ignoring the shiver under my skin and shaking off the sleepiness, "What's it like? Before here, I mean."

"Hell of a party." Dante answered at once, rummaging around for the corkscrew, "Probably the best in my life."

"Then what changed?"

"I met a ghost." He said, giving up and used his massive sword to open the wine. A clean cut at the neck.

"A ghost?"

"Yep."

I waited for a moment, but Dante was preoccupied with washing the wine down into his stomach and didn't seem like he's going to explain. I told him to save me some and he just mumbled around the sharp edge at the mouth of the bottle, looking annoyingly smug. There was crimson liquid running down the corner of his mouth and I couldn't tell, under the dim light, that whether it's the wine spilling over or Dante's own blood.

If Dante would not offer voluntarily then I would never bring it up. So instead I asked, "So how's this life treating you?"

Dante let go of the bottle and took a deep breath. The best half of it was already gone. "You know me. I get by." He leaned against the bar and smiled darkly, "Even if the music has stopped and I'm bored as hell, but hey, as long as I stay, somebody's got to be drunk enough to pull another stunt."

"You can't solely sustain on a few stunts." I said. "Especially you."

"Sure can't."

"Then why stay?"

Dante puffed out a breath and finally laughed. Dry and brittle, the sound rolled between us for a second, before crumbling into dust on itself. "You got me. I have absolutely no fucking idea." Dante crowed, "Ain't that the question of the decade." He stared ahead idly for a moment, then said, "I'll need to think about it. Ask me again in like ten years."

"You could be dead by then."

"I could be." Dante just shrugged, finishing up the wine, and returned to his chair and guitar.

He didn't seem to need the answer after all.

The next time I woke up Dante was gone. There's a note nailed on the board, saying "gotta work, help yourself to the leftover". Next to the note, the carcass of something devilish was grimacing at me with a silent scream dead in its putrid mouth, and suddenly everything was too quiet.

Dante had been in a brooding mood during the entirety of my stay but with only myself this place felt like a coffin. The shadows, without their favourite victim, were now whispering to me like the seduction of the devil, luring me step by step towards the precipice into hell. It's suffocating, in this grave, I clawed at my throat feeling heated air expanding my lungs but no breath comes out. The shadows' claw was closing around me, dragging me down, letting me fall. 

_Nowhere to go, nowhere to go._

I don't know how Dante lived in a place like this. What he's even been thinking staring into this dark void six feet under. Day after day, night after night, sitting in his chair and listening to nothing but his own breath bouncing off the walls. Trapped here, buried alive. Not living yet not dead.

I wondered did Dante left to escape from this limbo of his own making. 

I didn't stay.

 

 

 

I managed to get caught and stayed alive in custody. When all were said and done the aftermath had blown over sufficiently and they sent me to the nearby church for community service. I shivered when I stepped onto the front step of the church gate. "Great, now they've pinned down my crime, they are sending me here to have you tell me all about my sins," I said to the young priest named Claudius. He's a solemn-looking man, but not the kind you would expect to see in a priest.

Claudius merely gave me an aloof glance and led me inside, "As a matter of fact, people normally come here to confess their sins."

And that sounded like a challenge to me. "Oh father bless me for I have sinned." I said, doing a mocking parody of praying, "I haven't stolen I haven't killed but have mercy on my soul I didn't have a legal pimp." I quirked my eyebrow at him for confirmation, "How did I do?"

"Inadequate." He replied briefly as he showed me into the storage room to help with moving the food. There're raw ingredients, a few piles of canned food and fewer volunteers, not nearly enough for the destitution I'd seen on the street. The abundance of food in my sight was delightful nevertheless. I popped a candy inside my mouth before getting my hands dirty, tasting pink as I go.

I asked Claudius after a while, "Is it because I didn't do it in the booth?"

"There's no improper environment for confession." He said plainly, "It's your lack of repentance rendered it obsolete."

"So harsh. No wonder kids go to Catholic school look like that." I chuckled, the candy rattling around between my teeth. I pressed to crush it. "But father, maybe someone, I mean there's got to be _someone_ , out of all those people in the world, would be willing to grant me a moment of peace, before I fall into hell?" With a light crack, the candy broke and the sweetness burst on my tongue like a shattered disco ball.

The brown eyes of the priest fixed on me for a heartbeat, then moved away.

"Ah." I told myself, feeling a piece of candy stuck under my teeth. "But he just laughs at me."

Claudius was overseeing and preparing for the sermon whilst we prepare the food. I stared in rapt at the simmering soup before turning to him and asked what's the topic. I didn't really care but it's a good distraction from the food, to stop me from burying my head into the cauldron and getting a first-degree burn. Or at least, before the devil does so for me later in hell.

"We were going through Genesis recently." Claudius was saying, staring at his Bible like it's the most fascinating thing in the whole world. "I'll talk about the Tower of Babel today."

"Any reason for that?"

He paused for a second. "Are you aware of the current petition to renovate the tower?"

"That thing's still going?" I huffed, remembering the article I read on Dante's couch too many times. "What do they want anyway? Redecorating that ghastly tower into a goth museum or something?"

"To some people—people of faith," Claudius said carefully, "It's a sign of salvation."

I frowned. "You guys do remember what happened that day, right? How's that a fucking miracle of your god?"

The priest's even brown eyes got slightly darker as if being cast over by a shadow, approaching a shade of black. "I remember it quite vividly." He said, fingers brushing past the rosary serving as a weight on the pages, "After all, I was saved by God on that very day."

"Wow. Great." I barked out a felonious laugh. "So you were let in the church door that one time and got an epiphany all of a sudden? Aintcha religious people a melodramatic bunch."

But Claudius smirked. "It's imprudent to reach a conclusion so soon." He said, "The situation in front of the church was chaotic, to say the least. I was...unable to reach the door that day." 

"I see." I said. "So what exactly led you to this," I gestured at the Bible, "revelation?"

"The Lord doesn't hold hand, but teaches the path and shows the way," The priest said solemnly, "It's his truth, that to reach the gate of heaven, I must not sit still and wait."

I couldn't say that I disagree.

I told Claudius that I never read the Bible so he lent me his. I thumbed past the six days of artistic inspiration, the birth of the first incestuous relationship, the first old man shouting get off my front lawn, and the first brotherly murder. Good old stories we've all known since our childhood.

I thumbed past them and I was finally told the story of the tower. People speaking the same language, understanding each other perfectly and not wanting to call themselves by different names. Then because they didn't busy themselves with misunderstandings and calling names they had the leisure to come together to build a tower. The audacity of our ancestors. They didn't sit still and await the judgement of their good lord, didn't toil in the dirt on the mortal earth in their own sin. How preposterous, that they thought they would build a tower of genius design and reach heaven through arduous labour.

So the old man sitting high on the front porch of his heaven looked down and said, behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

He said, go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. [1]

And how like the god I imagined, this god. It made me smile, and asked Claudius, secretively under my breath, "Padre, do your colleagues here know that you mean to defy your god? To achieve heaven with the way he forbids?"

Then the realisation struck me, my chest bubbling with amusement and ruthlessness like the devil's cauldron. "What's your sin, father, for which you may not reach heaven if according to his design?" 

It's a cathartic feeling, seeing the slightest sneer forming on his lips and his eyes fixed on me like two pieces of obsidian, glassy, sharp and cold, in which the intensity of the lava's heat still remains, and they were searing into my skin like the church branding a sinner. Quite exhilarating, that this priest was waking up the demon and bringing out the worst in me.

"I've no sin but the sins I was involuntarily born with," Claudius said stiffly, "I shall seek redemption, and dedicate this life purge myself of them." He retrieved the Bible from me and closed the book in one hand, the rosary's wooden beads clattering gently against each other, the Galilean on the cross bowing his head to one side, dying for his faith without a prayer nor a curse. 

"Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able." [1]

Claudius recited the biblical passage like there're truth and poetry in it, his eyes high above and looking past me into heaven. That self-assured, holier-than-thou stygian stare, it's saying he was right and I was a fool for not believing him. It said he'll enter the narrow door even if there's only him in the entire eden forlorn and godforsaken. I had not heard a lie so sacred and seen an arrogance so divine in my entire life. Not since Lina declared when we were five that she would own a library when she grew up, and that she would dedicate an entire section of this library to me if I ask nicely.

It made me fall in and out of love at the same time.

After the distribution of the food there was the sermon. After the sermon there was the choir. I had fallen asleep during the sermon but was woken by the choir with dribble on my chin and a strange headache pounding at my temples. Claudius was sitting at the other end of the bench, listening to the choir intently. 

I popped another candy into my mouth and feeling the headache slowly subside. I let my gaze wander, out of the church window and towards the tower. There it stood, unchanged and ageless, us mortals' frivolous quarrel notwithstanding; tall and imposing and mute, making no comment at the human world's tiresome business of heaven or hell. Who did raise this tower then if not Claudius's god, I couldn't help but wonder. What they were seeking. What door they wished to enter and what was left behind.

The choir was still singing and Claudius still listening. I couldn't understand a single word of the song, just like his god intended confounding our language. To talk and not convey, to listen and not understand. To be constantly at odds, wasting lives on meaningless rivalries. Exactly what he wanted and exactly how we would live.

The music was filling the hall like smoke, floating intangibly and stinging my eyes. I turned to look at Claudius at the other end of the bench and found him looking back. He was basking in the afternoon sun slanting through the window and I hiding in the shadow outside of its golden kingdom. Then I thought to myself, that this man had cast himself in the form of an angel statue, skin cold like marble and form rigid like stone, slowly chiselling away at himself in its unearthly image. 

But I was forever covered in dirt and grime, blood and sweat. The epitome of human inadequacy. The distance between us was too long and the difference too vast. We couldn't understand each other, even if we tried.

So I merely looked on, grinning wildly to cover the dread blighting my heart, feeling Claudius studying me thoughtfully for one more moment, his brown eyes like the rosary that was winding around his hand, dark, smooth, and too holy for me to behold.

 

 

 

The next time I went down to Dante's place to deliver a piece of information he required there's music behind that broken door. Dante was playing the guitar and at last listening to something with coherent words.

"Early this morning, when you knocked upon my door." The singer was crooning drearily as I reached the front door. Dante didn't notice or simply wasn't paying attention to me. He was staring at his own shadow with a guarded expression as if bargaining for a deal. The glove I had seen once ten years ago was now again resting on one corner of the desk, the blood stain had faded into an earthy discolouration like tainted memory.

Dante's crimson coat, however, was still as stark as a glaring wound against the run-down background. The only living colour in the devil's den.

Again the singer sang, to the morbid melody of the guitar, "I said 'Hello Satan, I believe it's time for me to go'." Dante mouthed the lyrics to himself, snorted, then turned his unsmiling eyes to me. 

I walked up and made no comment. 

_This_ , this I could understand, I thought to myself as we talked. Here before my eyes was not a devil, but a man possessed. With a ghost hiding in his shadow, seeing familiar faces in every corner he turns and every dream he has, and a devil in his mind, speaking everything he disagrees with but in the sweetest voice of his beloved. Haunted and hunted, living in a limbo, undecided about life or death, heaven or hell.

I understood this man's language. I knew this song. For I'm the devil, and the one standing beside it.

Me and the devil, walking side by side. [2]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] King James Version.  
> Translation was chosen for writing purpose only.
> 
> [2] Me and the Devil Blues, Robert Johnson.  
> It was rumoured that Johnson had made a deal with a devil to master the art of guitar and blues music.  
> I would recommend Gil Scott-Heron's version of this song if you're interested in a more modern take.


	4. life goes on

It was a coincidence, that I met Dante on the street in front of his shop. I was on my way to the church and found his front door fixed, two firm and smooth pieces of wood and metal guarding loyally and perfectly all the devil's secrets. Where did he get the money and the desire to fix it, I wondered, after all these years of negligence and indifference, sitting in his mercy seat waiting for a ghost or a knock from the devil. I wanted to push it open and ask what had happened to the glove, but the illusion of the dark and suffocating coffin assaulted me then all of a sudden I didn't need an answer.

When I turned around to leave, however, abruptly I saw Dante walking down the street, slowly and absent-mindedly, looking exhausted instead of bored, dragging a sword with a skull on its guard, the tip of the sword scraping the ground with a metallic screech.

It's another year's summer. The sun was glaring behind him and there's a long shadow before Dante. He was walking in a deliberate manner, stepping onto the shadow one step after another. His back, covered by the crimson coat, was burning loudly from the torrid glare of the eye of flame, but his front was a hush of shadows.

It shouldn't be this strange, that his shadow was attached to him at his feet, the way it moved just like he did and wouldn't be left behind, how this elongated silhouette of Dante stretching out like a ghostly claw, clinging to him, holding him, towering over and engulfing him.

"They are tearing down the tower." I had blurted out as a shiver climbed up my spine.

Dante merely gave me an inscrutable glance, and I couldn't help but step back, the shadow brushing past me with an inaudible whisper.

Once more Dante's covered in greyish powder from head to toe, white hair semi-translucent under the harsh light, his form cold and rigid like a statue carved out of stone. The pale ghost manifested, I think. A ghost in the very image of his own, staring back from the void with Dante's face all quiet and nonliving.

Unlike Dante, this ghost had no smile of his own, not even a facade, bracing life with the uttermost solemnity, unflinching and unrepenting.

He stopped in front of the door and clutched at the handle, "You're late. It's done." He told me flatly, pulling it open.

The door let out a low groan, opening as heavily as a casket.

Then the ghost was walking inside, without fear, without nostalgia, doing what should be done and leaving no room for regret. He walked inside the tomb voluntarily, without a prayer nor a curse, to be buried for the living of the other.

He walked through the door and was trapped no more.

The door closed.

 

 

 

When I reached the church there's a big commotion going on. Casually dressed civilians and carefully armoured officers staring at each other like gargoyles, waiting for words raining down from their respective heaven and flowing through their perpetually gaping fanged mouths. Water cannons had been employed, puddles shinning like colourless blood under the severe eye of the blazing sun, worthless and about to be erased without a trace. The air was full of dust, itching my nose.

People crying and shouting and running and hiding. Praying.

They prayed like they were being punished. Like their mute god had finally broken the silence for once, not to deliver but condemn.

The tower was nowhere to be seen.

I approached the cordon, which was situated away quite generously from the tower, or more accurately, the ruin of it. Inside, someone was talking loudly into their phone, about a demolition team not needed and a supposed spectacle not performed then a powerful man not pleased even if the result was exactly the same, sorting out the logistics and the politics and the mental gymnastics. Fascinating stuff, but I wasn't as curious as to when I was younger.

There's only a small pile of rubble around where the tower once stood now, hardly matching its menacing size. As well as pulverized greyish dust of stone, scattering everywhere like ashes of the dead.

It's Dante, I told myself.

It's funny, seeing the very thing turned my life upside down like this, broken into pieces then grounded into dust. Over the years the tower's presence had been largely accepted around the blocks through soulless disregard, the Residential Area's trademark neighbourhood hospitality. We walked past this horrible wound every day with reserved eyes, never asking how did this happen and what we're going to do about it.

It's the standard procedure here, to suffer without questioning; an understanding, that we gonna anguish no matter we deserve it or not. We keep our hands to ourselves and do not touch old wounds, letting fate decide whether it would heal or fester. Call it laziness, cowardice or wisdom as you like, none of which would be completely true.

It is a luxury in life, really, asking why, one most of us just couldn't afford. And I almost did, if I'm being honest with myself, falling down the rabbit hole of an unsalvagable past. Never been one to accept the price tag on things, at the end of the day.

But before I noticed life went on, the memory blurred and the pain dulled. I was lost and had lost too much, with no place and nothing to call my own. I simply couldn't spare another piece of myself to feed into the crying mouthes of hate and anger, so they just starved to death, leaving only ghosts haunting me, accusing me of negligent homicide, weeping about what-ifs and should-haves.

The ghost's incessant wailing had been grating, to say the least. I'm not a patient person, not here for the long haul. I do what I like when I want to and stand my ground when I don't. Nagging and force simply don't do it for me. And I thought, strenuous and dramatic it may be, this method of Dante's probably the best. We'd got to do something like this at least once in the midst of this hopelessly extensive lifetime.

Ghost of the past must be buried, just like this tower before me, by the very hands of the one it haunted.

I spared a final glance at the ruin, then turned on my heels, heading towards the church.

Claudius was at the front of the church, frowning and pacing in apparent frustration, a stark contrast to the praying crowd around him, who were mostly shaking in fearful tears.

"In a bad mood?" I greeted him with a casual smile.

Claudius raised his head sharply to me, eyes dark and stormy, fingers closing around the rosary, knuckles whiten, approaching the shade of bones.

I was liking the colours I saw. "So," I continued without waiting for a reply, "your god didn't approve of this after all. He didn't even wait until we fuck this up all by ourselves." I lifted my eyebrow, giving him my best drama, "Surprising motivated, I say, this god."

At this point, Claudius had stopped his pacing, standing motionlessly to regard me, and I shivered under my skin inconspicuously, from the lack of warmth in his eyes. The insolent smile hanging on my lips froze, becoming brittle.

"You know who did this." He said, plain and simple, without a trace of doubt in his voice.

He wasn't wrong.

Brief our acquaintance and fundamental our disagreement may be, Claudius knew me. He didn't, nor care to, understand my way of living, yet he saw through my mask and knew in his heart what makes me tick.

Our sparse meetings in the past year had been a series of barbed questions and morose statements. I bit and I dodged, I laughed at every chance I got, while Claudius, ever so lofty and composed, countering my every remark with cold observation and pointless quotes from his ancient books, never raising nor quickening his even voice. It's as thrilling as it was annoying.

We accused and interrogated instead of expounding and contemplating. Our obstinate way of dance, stepping on each other's toes repeatedly, with no one willing to stop to address the issue, each refused to let go of one another's hands.

It was as much a blessing as a curse.

I huffed, agitated by Claudius's loftiness already. "Does it even matter now? They were going to blow it up anyway." I said, "What matters is this: kingdom of heaven or kingdom on earth, they all love the feeling of control too much. There is no place for your tower. Accept this and move on."

"Give me the name," Claudius said, utterly unperturbed as usual.

"Like hell."

"Give me the name," he paused, for a noticeable amount of time, as if weighing his options, "and Heaven will be yours too."

It's ridiculously hilarious that he presumed his heaven meant anything to me.

I waved and started to circle around him, drawing with my feet a presumptuous grin. "What, playing god already, even before you get into heaven? Is the throne what you've been after all along? Ambitious." I said with an acidic laugh. "But lemme tell you something. If you did it, and that's a big if, at best your seating would be at the far back of the theatre, beside a particularly talkative neighbour. And what will be on stage? Still the human comedy your god wrote within only six days." I shook my head, "Such a tragedy, it's breaking my heart."

Claudius merely watched me, with unreachable thoughts behind lightless eyes. "Why do you reject Heaven?" he asked, "The _home_ to which we all belong?"

I let out a long sigh. "Ah, it finally starts to make sense to me now, your heaven. A home? Of course. Just like people say, a home's where your deadbeat dad is." I spread my hands at him," But haven't you noticed? Daddy's left us to our own devices a long time ago."

"So this is your problem? Resentment, for being abandoned by a father?"

"What father?" I barked. "I just don't like your biblical ways, that's all."

Claudius snorted. "What do you propose then? Wallow on this pathetic earth, live at the mercy of those depraved and unworthy? Or do you expect to be presented on a silver platter the glory of paradise?" The pair of obsidian was staring me down with thinly veiled distaste, "Greed and sloth."

Here we go, I thought to myself, rolling my eyes. I was right after all, he's prepared this whole time to tell me about my sins. The arrogance of believing in a judgement. _Priests_.

"Pride and wrath." I snapped right back.

For whatever reason it was, Claudius made no retort. He was touching the rosary around his hand idly, and cast his eyes towards the ruin of the tower, where the head priest was approaching a modestly expensive car with followers in tow, looking as smugly humble as ever. The crowd before us was twitching nervously, stretching their necks to make out the scene, twittering amongst themselves like disturbed flocks of birds. I was so caught up with our friendly banter I didn't notice this latest event unfolding before our eyes.

The head priest of the church was a tall and oily man, accommodating, as you would expect your community priest to be, liked to tell unfunny religious jokes during his sermon, yet, according to Claudius, not so impressed by this earth he lived on and the ones he surrounded himself with. Tedious, albeit useful, as Claudius would've put it. He didn't interest me.

There were a tiny screech and quiet gasps. A few words exchanged and orders barked out, a prayer uttered aloud as a command. The masters of two people had spoken. Then all hell broke loose, like a rainstorm in summer, slamming down the earth without a single notice. Waves and waves of shouting and praying, showering this corner of the Residential Area, into a tangling dishevelled drench.

Claudius said nothing of the sort but I knew it was him the source of all this. Beside me, inside the surprisingly unnoticed pocket before the church gate, he was observing the chaos with clinical clarity, no single drop of guilt marring the flawlessly glazed obsidians of his eyes, yet no ill-intent, as well. He didn't care about this earth enough, to want anyone to suffer, but just enough for him having no regret over any bloodshed or life ruined.

I saw the irony in his smirking eyes, obscured outlines of a smile emerging from the dead of the night. The irony of this desperation, this misplaced hope, of destruction so easily being heralded as a blessing and the destruction of it a curse. How malleable one's fear and grief might be. Cast them into your chosen mould and voila! The desired result is yours for the taking.

I knew because I had done so, with my own fear and grief. I had been the author of my own sculpture, which I would not accept to be shaped by another.

If I'm not mistaken, so had Claudius. 

Is it not strange, to think that the man most similar to me, was the one I the most couldn't agree with?

And he's a strange man indeed. Solemn yet not unappreciative of my cynicism. Purposeful yet indifferent. Devout yet distrusting. He talked about ways of god yet never the man himself, pursing heaven, but doesn't care about the bliss and the purity associated with it. He was doing the opposite of what I would do if put into the same shoes, chasing the very thing that shunned him and feeding the entirety of himself into an insatiable mouth.

Strange. Mad. Alone.

Is his god like this, as well? Maybe this god is not an older man like we imagine our patriarchy gods, but a young man with cold eyes, gazing down from the front step of his heaven, with no malice, yet no obligation to act in response to our sufferings because there's no consequence he cares, had no one to answer to, no father as a mould to cast himself into. Acting solely on his own desire and own will, observing the tragedy he created and sees a comedy, a failed experiment that couldn't even put a true smile into those impassive eyes.

Then a name swept into my mind like a shadow. "Lucifer," I said, my voice almost completely drowned out by the havoc before us. So I walked closer, leaning into a side of Claudius's ears to say, "Lucifer. He sought to usurp your god from his throne, did he not?"

The priest stood unmoving, detached. "He did not."

"A beautiful angel he was, but banished as a punishment for his rebellion from heaven into hell, was he not?"

"He was not."

I huffed. "I was told lies my whole life then."

"Lucifer the fallen. The morning star and the light bringer. The king of Babylon." said Claudius, producing the bible from his side and opening it in one hand. "A lie, or a misinterpretation."

"Confounded languages." I suggested.

Claudius blinked at me for an instant, then returned to his book. "Yes."

"For thou hast said in thine heart," He intoned with his refined and calculated voice, which rang out unaffected against the noise of the crowd, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High." [1]

He recited this, not as a proverb, but a motto, while I continued to read, beside his ear and breathing his air, the grim future awaits him:

Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners? [1]

I couldn't help but shiver.

"But still he fell, did he not? Just like Satan, as lightning fall from heaven. Likewise your tower." I managed, gesturing towards the ruin, and saw the conflict drawing to an end, just like a rainstorm in summer, sudden, violent, yet brief. "The battle was already lost."

Claudius had seen this too. "Shall I live as the likes of you then? Shall I abandon this path leading to the strait gate, which I carved out from nothingness with my bare hands?" He asked quietly, dark eyes inches away from my own. "Leave, if you would not leave this savage wilderness, and let me lead you on this path to the place I spoke of, to the gateway of Saint Peter." He whispered, as gently as he'd ever been, "I shan't be denied heaven." [2]

Weak and confused my language was, against the unyielding unimpugnable one of Claudius, I would not be able to stop the fall.

And he wouldn't allow it anyway. Pride and wrath, the fatal sins of the man before me, for which he would never achieve heaven. He who died the first time the gate of the church refused him, he who would die a second death when he falls from heaven into hell.

Our debates had been nothing but self-indulgent and pointless. Not a single word we spoke had brought us together instead of driving us apart. Confounded languages not clarified, not understood. Everything opposite and everything at odds.

The sword of Damocles was finally falling down, and severed we must be.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! [1]

I tried to kiss Claudius but he stopped me with the hard cover of his bible, my lipstick smeared on it like blood. There's not much expression on his face but his eyes, stubborn and unrepenting, were laughing haughtily at my naivety and hollow attempt.

And I thought bitterly to myself, that he was right. Our difference shan't be settled by a simple kiss and neither would it resolve our grudges with this world. The wheel of time had been moving and the stone of fate rolling. Just how a classic tragedy would pan out. What's done is done, and whatever goes, goes.

Claudius pushed the sullied book into my hands, and turned to enter the gate of the church, leaving the muddled and the trifling behind, into his foster home of his imagined father, in which the angel statues were staring with blank eyes and the choir singing in the language I would not understand. My last view of him was that of who was mourning after a grievously defeated battle, but still rushing headlong into another.

I would mourn with him, if only I believed in heaven.

But maybe, just maybe, I'll try to believe in a door.

 

 

 

The next time I pushed open Dante's door it was no coincidence. I walked in, threw a thick stack of bills on his desk and noticed the surroundings were somewhat different. The interior seemed to have gotten a little bit of a redecoration, looking smaller, cosier, but quite honestly still a hot mess. There's a boy standing next to the couch looking bristled all over, ready to pounce at any minute.

"Ah, a rare guest graced my humble abode. Looking for a couch again?" Dante grinned, looking creepily happy to see me. He clapped, "Fantastic, our only spot had just opened."

He had somehow changed as well, growing out a fuzz of stubbles, looking older without much aging. Just like this room, no less disorganized but the door, heavy and smooth, was now closed.

The boy was already lunging forward and growling like a lion cub, "I'm not leaving Dante, not before you explain what had happened."

"You can't ask a man to explain everything he does, alright?" Dante skewed around in his chair and crooked an eyebrow, "It could get real embarassing, real quick."

"Words of wisdom." I commented.

Dante bowed his head to me, smiling, "Thank you."

The boy squinted his eyes at me. He had also a head full of white hair like Dante but his eyes, blue like gems, were full of life and fire. Is it just the bonus of youth, or has it always been a rare gift bequeathed by fate only to a selected few? I was starting to forget about eyes like these, and honestly couldn't tell.

"I'm not asking you to explain everything," The boy was saying, suddenly calming down, turning his eyes back to Dante, "Only one."

Dante pouted and considered for a long moment, eyes jumping between me and the boy as if deciding which one of us he'd rather not talk to at this moment. "That, I probably can manage," He said, eventually, nodding to himself, adjusting the coat, reponsitioning in the chair like he wasn't just agreeing on answering one simple question, but something much more bigger. The drama in this man, I thought, you could almost call it...endearing.

After another long moment, Dante was finally done with his fidgeting and pampering. "Shoot." 

And the boy said immediately, "Why were you after my target?"

"A mixed up contract, I believe." Dante shrugged, "This kind of things do happen, ya know, and we don't exactly have an union or a board in this buniness. Better get used to it."

"Is that so?" The boy chuckled without heat, head bowed, slowly circling in front of Dante's heavy desk, behind which Dante was observing his movement with calm and careful eyes. "A mixing-up, on a contract for a demon that's been after the very thing in my own arm, which you said belonged to your brother."

This shit is poignant, I thought to myself.

"Now that you're talking about it like that, it doesn't sound like a coincidence, yes." Dante said, "But it's a spiny case, literally and figuratively, and I'm the best in the business. Can't really blame the client if they come knocking on my door, can you?"

All of the sudden, the boy stopped right in front of dante, and raised his head to stare into Dante's eyes. "Who's Vergil?"

My view of Dante's face was blocked by the boy from my position, and the silence lasted for no more than half a second, but I knew this silence.

The silence six feet under, behind a closed tomb and a nailed coffin, chilling and suffocating.

All of a sudden, Dante was standing up without dropping his feet to the ground, rising in an uncanny manner right onto his desk, his crimson coat draping around him like a muleta. "And that," He held out two fingers with a flourish, and declared truimphantly, "is a second question."

With that, the boy exploded again.

I watched as the two argued. This strange and unmatched dance, one always launching forward and the other forever remaining in his spot, twisting only scantly to negate the blow. Dante was watching me too, during the entirety of their conversation, openly not welcoming my presense here, but did nothing to stop the boy from running his mouth. I could get used to this newly established passive hostility, if given time, but I couldn't say that I care.

Dante's chasing a new life, from the looks of it. So was I.

So I opened my mouth and said to Dante, "I'm hiring you on a job."

"Um, got my hands tied on something right now." Dante looked down from atop of the desk, "Besides, you know it's not how this line of business works. You'd need to go through Morrison first." He gestured at the sofa, "You sure you don't need a couch though?"

"Not even wanna know what the job is? Right." I drawled, making a show it, then turned to the boy, "You in the same business as him?"

"That's right." The boy puffed up a little, shooting Dante a righteous glare.

I gave him my best smile. "Interested in a bit of quick cash?" I pointed at the stack on the desk, "Up front, no strings attached."

"I—" The boy opened his mouth but Dante, as I expected, intercepted, "He's not taking it."

"He's not?" I repeated, tilting my head at Dante. I was impatient and in no mood for a dance with someone as slippery as Dante.

The boy stepped up, positively seething for being used as a bargaining chip, and in his very presence. "He's making his own fucking decision." He chewed.

I probably would feel much more apologetic for stealing his argument, and of course for using him, if he wasn't still blocking half of my view.

Eventually, "Nero," Dante said with his smoothest voice, jumping down from the desk and threw himself into the chair with mathematical precision, "Would you mind?"

The boy scowled at him, then at me.

I shrugged.

When the boy turned his back, something in Dante's eyes shifted. The illusive smile dispersed, replaced by something far more honest yet precarious. He's looking at him like staring through a motel window on a rainy night, everything blurred and distorted by the fogged glass and the dirty rain, trying to make out a taillight pulling into the driveway, bringing him the fix he's been waiting for.

I knew that look too well.

I said as the boy walked past me, "Don't get attached, cowboy," and he grunted behind me, shutting the door as loud as a gunshot.

Dante's unsmiling eyes had found their way to me in the past second. He smirks. "What, him? You're not doing him any good overestimating his charm. But thanks for the thought."

I returned the same smirk. "I was talking to the kid."

Dante tsked, sitting back and crossing his legs on the table, "The _kid_ is not gonna work for you."

"So you're his booker now, aren't you?"

"What if I am?"

"Then be the booker. Got to know people, being in a business like yours. If you won't do it, then give me a name," I stopped him before he said anything else, gesturing at the stack on the table, "and keep half of this."

Dante titled his head to observe the money. "Very generous of you." He said, "But I'll pass."

Just as I expected.

I breathed out, strolled about for a few steps, inspecting a few pieces of furnitures I didn't recognise, then went sit down on the couch. The same one I slept on so many hazy days and nights and shared so many nightmares with. I touched the worn leather, tracing its soft wrinkles with my fingers. It felt as tired as I was.

I looked up, and asked Dante a completely irrelevant question, the one I asked him years ago but never got my answer:

"Why didn't you leave?"

"To where?" He merely said, making it very clear that he's indulging me.

"From here."

"Why would I do that? Life's good here." Dante said, smiling with his usual apathy. "A roof over my head. Job to put food on my table. A few friends. Even a little bit of music if you're into that kind of stuff." He spread his hands, "Why, I like to think that I have it all."

Some leftover bullshitting from his talk with the boy, I thought to myself with a snort. Dante's either getting sloppy with age or simply didn't give a shit anymore. So I said, "Is that so? You're broke as fuck, your shop smells like ass," I ignored the wounded little "hey", "And after all these years, your neighbours still call you a devil."

"What can I say." Dante gave me a lopsided grin, eyes frozen and impassive behind his hair, "I'm a simple guy."

"So I've heard," I said, "and there's nothing more simple than money. I know you need it." I stared into Dante's two smooth orbs of icy blue, looking for cracks on their crystallised veneer, making sure that he's listening.

"I'm leaving, and I don't need a past behind me." I told him plainly and honestly, betting on the slim chance that even the skeleton had been burned and its ashes scattered, the ghost of his past was still buried under that solid ice, showing its hazy outline from time to time at the corners of his eyes, where tears would gather if the ice were to melt.

After a long blankness of silence, "Where're you going?" asked Dante, but it's not what he's saying and not what I heard. 

It's the other half of my question, the true predicament we'd gotten ourselves into, blindly and naively, walking into life's cushiony yet domineering hand:

_Where can you go?_

"Another city." I breathed, "Another life."

Dante huffed. "You know it doesn't work."

"It didn't for you," I pointed out, "I must try."

"Then who am I to stop you from escaping?" Dante said, shrugging.

We sat, wordlessly in our respective spots, the ultimate question hovering between us, one we both knew that none of us had the answer to. What's could be said was said.

But life always goes on, and what's needed to be done must be done.

"So," At last Dante spoke again, "What's the job like? I'm also famous for being picky in my business though, just so you know."

I wouldn't admit it, but I was almost relieved.

Dante wasn't lying before, about him being a simple guy. He doesn't really lie anyway. Throughout the years, I knew for a fact that Dante had always stuck with what he likes, bordering on silly obsession—his pizza, his sundae, his music, and above all, his party. It's embarrassingly easy to prepare a good time for Dante, as long as you know what strikes his fancy. What's hard is having him accept the invitaion.

Sitting back into the couch, I let myself relax into the leather. "It will be dangerous. It willl be messy." I told him, "It will be hell of a party."

Dante let out a short breath, seemly regetting letting me in on this little secret. But there's finally warmth in his eyes, a spark of flame ignited, a fiendish grin splitting his face ear to ear.

"Then let's talk business."

The boy was sitting on the steps twisting his ankles when I exited the front door. He looked up at me through an inquiring frown but didn't stand up.

"I'm finished here, you can go inside now, kid." I said.

"I'm fine here." The boy said, looking slightly annoyed that I called him a kid, much more annoyed, however, at himself, and couldn't for the life of him pick a fight with a peaceful stranger.

"Hmm. It's probably for the best." I said, "Dante was whining about how much you're an annoying brat back in there. He could be such a dick sometimes, right?"

The boy shot up from the ground at once. He didn't seem to buy my bait but was pissed nontheless. Everybody needs an exuse for a fight from time to time, and I'll consider this an apology, I thought as I watched the boy slamming into the heavy door like a bull. I grinned my farewell to Dante's squinting eyes.

Before the door was fully closed, for a split second, I saw him looking at me like staring into a black mirror.

 

 

 

I went to the church before I left, shouldering my belongings in one backpack. I was feeling like leaving everything behind and knew from experience that this would be enough.

Claudius wasn't there, as I expected. The church was closed to the public for "saftey concern" and the staff were at the city hall bargaining pointlessly for an unrecognised deal. The good ol' wrestle between two kingdoms, for this plot of bitter earth.

I walked through the empty church, having not entered through the front gate, hearing my footsteps knocking at my eardrums like the tick of the clock, one step after another, leaving the shadow of my past behind.

Then I was standing behind the desk where Claudius preached, gazing at the unoccupied benches, then to his bible in my hand. What were he thinking, looking down upon the faithful, knowing fully well that he's never been one of them? What's it like, to go through life for the mere purpose of squeezing through a narrow door at the very end? To walk on earth and see only illusions of heaven, false inheritence from our long-gone ancestors, who were banished from their birthplace thousands of years ago?

What's it like, to live with a purpose, to walk with a destination, to dream about resting under the roof of a long-lost home?

An unture path did he step on, counterfeits of goodness did he follow. He had never believed in the empty promises life made behind a civilised mask, he saw right through the lies growing like weed on our mortal earth. Yet fall he did, from his upward climb into heaven, paradise into purgatory and purgatory into inferno. [3]

I've read this book but after that day I read no more. A kiss not landed, by one who was so insincere a lover, upon a desired smile, which was jeering at me, at my foolishness of confession to love and my cruelty of repudiation against it. This one, who I shall part from, and never again our eyes shall meet. [4]

For I am the South Pole and him the North, the opposite ends of one thing, the opposite answers to one fatal question, spinning every second around the same axis with the same speed on the same earth, and a whole world in between.

I put down the bible, my lipstick still red, staining it like blood woozing from an invisible wound. Then I walked out of the church, through the door that denied the ones I loved, across the empty streets of the Residential Area, past the devil's shop, the ruin of the tower, the vacated strip club and the demolished diner, over the trails and rivers spawling across the earth like blood vessels, away to the opposite part of the world. I left the place I was born and never again saw the brown eyes dark like the wooden beads of a rosery and cold like angel statues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] King James Version.  
> Translation was chosen for writing purpose only.
> 
> [2] Paraphrased from Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 1, translation by Allen Mandelbaum:
>
>> ...if you would leave this savage wilderness...  
> ...to lead me to the place of which you spoke,  
> that I may see the gateway of Saint Peter...
> 
> [3] Paraphrased from Dante's Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, Canto 30 , translation by Allen Mandelbaum:
>
>> ...he turned his footsteps toward an untrue path;  
> he followed counterfeits of goodness, which  
> will never pay in full what they have promised.
> 
> [4] Paraphrased from Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 5 , translation by Allen Mandelbaum:
>
>> And time and time again that reading led  
> our eyes to meet...  
> When we had read how the desired smile  
> was kissed by one who was so true a lover,  
> this one, who never shall be parted from me,  
> while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.  
> ...that day we read no more.


End file.
